AND FINALLY WE PLACED!!!! 2nd, 20 sec. after Cheetah (J29) and 2 sec. before Skimmer (J30)… This was the J-Day

Looking at the forecast, we knew this was gonna be favorable for the Js. Pretty much a North-South course with an East wind around 10 kt. And the results proved it!

We started the day with about 5 minutes of engine power, then “BEEEEEP” dead. Fiew! At least we were safely out of the marina! I thought I just ran out of gas last week-end, but no. It was more than that… Eric showed me how to drain the primary filter, and yes, it was full of gunk. I think getting the fuel low may have allowed residues to run up the lines and clog the filters. At least I hope it’s just that! Anyways, we had wind so we raised the sails and sailed towards Flemming Y.C. and I called the commitee boat (Allan – Bernoulli) to tell him I would register on the water. (I always have registration forms ready since it’s not the first time that we cannot make the skipper’s meeting! Ooops…)

The other detail we had to figure out was the spinnaker pole (remember, we broke it last week-end!). Tommy from Holland Marine fixed it on time for the race, but since Green Cove spring is not exactly next to Gainesville, I was not able to pick it up during openning hours. No problem for such nice people… They were racing onboard Cheetah, so they brought it with them! (This is why we let them win, they deserved it! haha! I wish I was not kidding…) So first trick of the day, sailing next to them to get the pole handed to us: Success!

Second trick, which we are starting to be really good at, sailing by the commitee boat to hand off our check and registration form! Nice job Ted, they were not even scared!

Third trick, one of those that we were not expecting, Ghost wants to hand Nikki the trophy they got in the first race of the offshore challenge 2 weeks ago. So here we go again, Ghost is trying to catch up to our side, but we were a little too fast (hum…) for their main + engine. We were nice (we kept the mooning for later), we luffed the sails to allow them closer. Nikki got the trophy with the special note on it: GRIND NIKKI GRIND… it was their theme song, I guess…

Ok, the start sequence is almost going to sound, time for me to grab the helm. Ted is supposed to be my helmsman, but he’s too nice of a guy. He won’t push anyone out of the start line if he can!! Even when I tell him to!! What’s up with that? I’ve been pushed out of the line often enough to enjoy a little “up-up-up!!!” with no shame But this race did not give me this opportunity. We had a somewhat good start, but we were a little too far west and behind eveyone else. Not that big of a deal, we got to the first upwind mark (G11) with the crowd… And that’s when we rocked! Right after the mark, every “super primed” spin boat raised their spinnaker. They were trying to go south in an East wind, but Julington creek always makes the wind go crazy, so as soon as we hit the upper part of the bay, it became a close reach! Everybody fell way off in the middle of the river when we could hug the shore (less current) and reach high. We gained on everyone there. We were the lead boat until Boom (Ultimate 24) passed us, maybe half a mile later (hey, no laughing, half a mile of lead for us is HUGE improvement!).

Anyways, we rounded the next mark (G15), came back north for the last time and rounded G13 to port. The last leg was the longest and most interresting one. Just like the wind veered north in the north part of the bay, it also veered south, south of the bay! That is when Cheetah raised his reaching chute and zipped by us. I swear, if we had been a little more confident that the winds would persist in that direction, we would have hoisted the rainbow spinnaker 1 minute earlier and would have maybe beat them too. We held this sail up to 60 degrees apparent, which was really surprising. The conditions were PERFECT… Not to mention the flat river, partly cloudy sky and 75F.

Getting closer to the finish, everyone dropped their spis and close hauled (pinching as high as possible) towards Bernoulli. By that time, all boats were pretty much lined up in their PHRF order. Boom (108), Cheetah (114), Salsa Verde (138), Skimmer (141), Ghost (171), Liberty Call (16?). Yeah, I know… Ghost is not in the right order, but let’s not talk about their PHRF rating… Hum, hum… Cal 9.2 on a lift. Let’s just say that we were so happy to beat them that we mooned them (to say thank you) as we were sailing back home and they were coming to the finish

The sail back was just as nice as the whole day. We were even able to sail right in the slip for the first time! Thanks to Ted for leading this maneuver!!! And thanks to Bob on Ox for offering his help once more!

Next week-end is engine fixing time! I really don’t want to miss a SAILING races because of an ENGINE problem. That would be horrible!

Thank you crew, you all did awesome! Now let’s keep it up!

Mag

What else would I want to do for my birthday? Easter sunday forecast: 10-15 from the E-N-E all day, sun and clouds, 75F… Let’s go sailing!!!

But it was quite an eventful day…
We raised the chute as we were sailing out of Julington, gybed and reached a little to head towards the bridge. When all of a suddent, BANG!!!! One of the pole up wire broke loose. Hum… Spinnaker was holding up fine with the pole way down on a beam reach! But we doused the spi in the companionway to try to temporairly fix the pole. When we were done with the knots and all, we realized we would not be able to hoist again, the wind had considerably picked up and we were now upwind. Oh well.
So as we are sailing towards the bridge, I hear the girls inside asking Tanguy (at the helm) to bare off to “stabilize” the boat… I’m thinking “WHAT THE HELL?? Is there a sisi scared of peeing under heal or what? We have to make the bridge guys! Come on!!!” And everyone tells me to just calm down and wait. I really had no idea what was going on. That’s when they came out with a cake, singing happy birthday What a crew, really! The candles blew with the wind as soon as they reached the edge of the companionway… Which is perfectly fine with me. Who needs to make a wish when they already have all they ever wished for?

Birthday cake underway = Easy candle blowing!

So we all ate Nicole and Heidi’s wonderful red velvet cake, which was supposed to be red and green, but the cooks are so health concious, their effort in substituting the fake coloring with health ingredients did not work as planned. The mint for a green icing was a good idea though! Thanks so much

We sailed to Epping forest marina, where we were dropping Graeme, who is another happy J30 owner. His boat, Skimmer, is the newer model. The one where you have an edge outside the cockpit to sit on when you’re healing! This edge also prevents the cockpit from getting wet… As Graeme could experienced yesterday! Although, even if we had been sailing on Skimmer, we would have been very wet anyway. Thanks to those 2 stupid sea-doos who showed us their talent at splashing sailboats. They even got the main sail pretty good.

On our way back from Epping, we saw something on the water… Looked like a bunch of lost surfers on their board. Oh no! It was a flipped catamaran, completely demasted with a broken hull and 4 people sitting on it. Hum… They were waving at us and asked us to tow them to shore. Even if Tanguy tried to convince me it was not a good idea, I decided to take the sails down and try to help. We got their line, but they felt like a rock. It was blowing above 15 kt, with white caps all over the river, and they wanted to be towed upwind to shore. Salsa Verde can barely move herself under power in these conditions. I once towed 2 kayaks, but that’s about all I can do, really. Then we saw a power boat (the “small boat, huge engine” type), so we waved and Erdem whistled really loud. They slowed down and looked at us, but didn’t change their course. We motored towards them and continued screaming and waving and whistling for what seemed to be forever! They clearly did not want to interact with us, but the good side won and they finally turned around, so we pointed at the cat and told them they needed a tow. As we got closer to them, we realized why they did not want to get involved… They looked like a bunch of underaged drunk kids. Sad, but they had more “help power” than we had. Luckily, not long after they got to the catamaran, 2 other power boats showed up to help. We guess they heard Nicole’s call on the VHF. From what we could see, it looked like they took the sailors on board and left the catamaran in the river. From now on, when sailing in the river, we will have to be careful not to run over crab pots AND broken catamarans…

The sail back was smoother, we still had the #1 and could have used a reef, but the rail needed to be washed anyway

As we approached the marina, we dropped the sails and started the engine, but it only worked for about 1 minute. Hum… “Guys! Get ready to drop anchor or hoist the main sail!!!!” I started the engine again, it worked for maybe 30 sec. Started it again, worked for 10 seconds… Ok, “DROP THE ANCHOR!” I’m thinking to myself, “Fiew! I have Boat US towing insurance, so I’ll be ok.” But for some unexplained reason, I thought Boat US towing and Sea Tow was the same. No it is not. There is a Sea Tow guy in my marina, but the closest boat US towing was busy and could have been there only in 2 hours. While I’m inside on the phone with these guys, my crew realizes that the anchor is not holding. We’re slipping, and we’re getting close to another boat at anchor… I thought the Fortress Anchor was supposed to be good on ANY bottom? Well not in the muddy St John’s apparently! But my crew are so awesome, they just hoisted the main and sailed away, I didn’t do anything… So when I was done with the telephone bullshit, I came out and thought, screw all this towing stuff, let’s sail in! But Bob on Ox, a C&C 33, came to the rescue and offered to tow us in. He explained his plan, it all made sens and sounded safe for both of us, so I accepted. Since the wind was going to be behind me as I get into my slip, I was affraid to be coming too fast. But the 4′7” depth of the mud in front of my slip quickly stopped my worries and Salsa Verde. We were lucky to be just close enough to the back piling to grab on it and pull the boat through the mud pile. Thanks to 3 strong guys on the bow, I would have had to swim to the dock with a bow line!

I should touch wood right now, but it seems like my only engine problem was fuel. I trusted my gauge too much. It said 1/8 left, and my thought was, if I only used 7/8 of a tank in ONE YEAR, I can use the 1/8 left for few more rides. NOT. I’ll need to check the filters next time to be sure there’s no clog…

This concluded my 28th birthday with excitement. It also concluded Tanguy and Gaëlle’s episode in Florida. I really appreciated having you on board this year, hope we can sail together again somewhere someday!

Mag